2017 Teaching as Research Conference
Tuesday, June 6, 2017 from 7:45 am – 5:30 pm
700 Clark Hall
Cornell community registration • Outside attendee registration • Abstracts due April 30
Sponsored by the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) and Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL at Cornell)
This annual one-day conference highlights and supports the research of graduate students and postdocs, faculty and staff into effective teaching. Events will include oral and poster presentations and roundtable discussions on how to use research skills to inform and improve teaching, as well as a keynote presentation by Dr. Michelle K. Smith of the University of Maine. This is the inaugural offering of what was previously the Classroom Research and Teaching Symposium – expanded this year into a national conference with outside attendees and presenters from across the country. Cornell faculty, staff, graduate students and postdocs are encouraged to attend as many of the sessions as they can.
Story about inaugural Teaching as Research conference
2017 Keynote Speaker
Michelle K. Smith, C. Ann Merrifield Professor in Life Science Education
Associate Professor, School of Biology and Ecology, University of Maine
Member, Maine Center for Research in STEM Education (RiSE Center)
Dr. Michelle Smith has a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Washington and did a postdoc with the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine, and holds the C. Ann Merrifield Professorship in Life Science Education. She is also a member of the Maine Center for Research in STEM Education. Her research engages undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, K-12 teachers, and university faculty in research on teaching and learning. Together they focus on: 1) developing tools to understand student conceptual difficulties and conduct classroom observations, 2) studying what aspects of peer discussion make it an effective learning tool, and 3) understanding what factors influence faculty members’ decisions about teaching. Michelle is currently a PI or co-PI on five NSF grants and a grant funded by the University of Maine Research Reinvestment Fund. She has co-authored over 25 peer-reviewed Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) articles.
Conference Keynote: Using Evidence to Transform Undergraduate Teaching
The teaching practices faculty employ play a critical role in improving student learning in college courses. Consequently, there is interest in assessing students’ conceptual knowledge at multiple points throughout the undergraduate curriculum. Dr. Smith will present the development of assessment tools that can help faculty make instructional decisions at multiple levels, including during a single class period, throughout a course, and as a department across the entire curriculum. In addition, she will discuss how student data collected from these tools has inspired groups of faculty from several institutions to share data on student learning with one another, collaboratively develop active-learning units, and create additional assessment opportunities to learn more about student thinking.
Agenda
7:45am Light breakfast available
8:00am Welcome and Introductions
8:30am Paper presentations I
Break
11am Poster session
12:00pm Lunch
12:30pm Roundtable discussions
1:30pm Paper presentations II
2:45pm Keynote: Using Evidence to Transform Undergraduate Teaching
4:30pm Informal reception
Attendee affiliations
Adelphi University, Austin Peay State University, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Cayuga Community College, Colorado State University – Pueblo, Columbia University, Iowa State University, Mount Holyoke College, Penn State University, University of California – Irvine, UCLA, The University of Georgia, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rochester, University of Texas at Austin, University of Vermont, Virginia Tech
Sponsorship
This event is brought to you by the Center for Teaching Excellence and the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL at Cornell), with funding provided in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DUE# 1231286). RSVPs requested. Contact cornellcte@cornell.edu with any questions.